Western Digital has announced its first entry into the NVMe Solid State Disk market. Coming out of the gate strong, its first offering is a PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe-based SSD that it expects to deliver more than three times the sequential read speeds over their current SATA SSDs portfolio

Initially to be offered in 256GB and 512GB capacities, it recommend people pair the product with a high-capacity hard drive, or as primary storage when building a future-ready PC. The WD Black PCIe SSD boasts up to 2050MB/s and 800MB/s sequential read and write speeds. Western Digital's internal benchmarking shows that people who are using the new WD Black PCIe SSD to boot up, load read-intensive games or applications, or shut down a system may realize a performance improvement of more than 10 seconds when compared to SATA SSDs.

One feature that is always a concern when it comes to SSDs is quality and support. Western Digital is standing by its industry-leading 1.75M hours MTTF, as well as making sure the drives qualified for its WD Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T.) Lab certification. Just like the previously launched SSDs from Western Digital, the WD Black PCIe SSDs include free, downloadable, WD SSD Dashboard software, which allows continuous performance, capacity monitoring, and firmware updates. Both models of the WD Black PCIe SSDs will come with a five year limited warranty.

Consumers can expect the WD Black PCIe SSDs to be available in 256GB and 512GB capacities in a singlesided M.2 2280 form factor. The manufacturers suggested retail price (MSRP) for the WD Black PCIe SSD will be $109 USD for the 256GB and $200 for the 512GB. The WD Black PCIe SSD will be available worldwide in the first half of 2017.

AMD is definitely pushing its plan to have a hardware lineup for a complete system and after the introduction of AMD Radeon memory, a newly leaked slides suggest that the company is just days from releasing its Radeon branded solid state drives, the Radeon R7 SSD series. We originally reported on AMD's SSD plans back in April, but now it seems launch is imminent.

To be available in 120, 240 and 480GB capacities, the upcoming Radeon R7 series SSDs will be based on OCZ/Indilinx Barefoot 3 M00 controller paired up wtih Toshiba 19nm MLC NAND flash memory. The recently leaked OCZ Arc 100 SSD lineup will feature similar specs and it appears that AMD has struck a deal with OCZ Storage Solutions, which is now a part of the Toshiba Group, to rebrand these drives.

AMD Radeon R7 series SSDs will use the standard 2.5-inch 7mm form factor and this combination of the Indilinx Barefoot 3 M00 controller and Toshiba 19nm MLC NAND will offer sequential read and write speeds of up to 550MB/s and 530MB/s (470MB/s write on the 120GB model). The 4K QD32 random read will be set at up to 85k, 95k and 100k IOPS for three models while maximum random 4K QD32 write will be at up to 90k IOPS on all three models.

While the leaked slides do not shed any light on the price, they do indicate that the drives should be released later this month. Since these are quite similar to the OCZ Arc 100 SSD series, you can expect them to have a similar price set at US $74.99, US $119.99 and US $239.99 for the 120, 240 and 480GB models.

ADATA Technology has announced that all of its, existing and forthcoming, solid state drives will feature a thinner and lighter case making them extremely suitable for slim-design notebooks and Ultrabooks.

According to ADATA, the new 2.5-inch 7mm SSDs will be 26 percent thinner and somewhat lighter with no loss of speed, capacity or durability. In order to make them backward compatible, all SSDs will also ship with a 2.5mm plastic holder that will make them fit snuggly in the existing 9.5mm slots.

With this move, ADATA aims to remain a leader in solid state technology.

Following the recent introduction (in April) of Vertex 4 SSDs based on the new Indilinx Everest 2 controller, OCZ has now rolled out the fourth generation of its mid-range Agility solid state drives.

Based on the same Indilinx Everest 2 controller paired up with 2Xnm synchronous MLC NAND chips, up to 1GB of DRAM cache, the new Agility 4 will be available in 64, 128, 256 and 512GB capacities and offer sequential read and write speeds of up to 400MB/s and 400MB/s. The write speed drops with capacity so the 128GB will max out at 300MB/s while the 64GB one drops down to 300/200 MB/s for read and write.

The random 4k read and write IOPS is set at up to 48k and 85k for the 256 and 512GB models. The 128GB one will max out at 58k and 72k while the 64GB one drops down to 46k and 47k IOPS.

Since it is based on the new Indilinx Everest 2 controller, the new Agility 4 SSD lineup features ECC correction, 256-bit AES-compliant data encription, SATA 6Gbps interface, TRIM and Indilinx nDurance 2.0 technology.

The entire series is backed by a 3-year warranty amd have already hit retail/e-tail in Europe with a price tag set at €74 for the 64GB, €120 for 128GB, €225 for the 256GB version and €490 for the 512GB version.

In case recent HDD price increases haven’t satisfied your lust for price hikes, then get a load of the Swiss Army SSD. Yep, you hear that right – an SSD tucked away in a Swiss knife.

Victorinox unveiled the product at CES 2012 and claims it is the smallest high-capacity SSD on the market. As you’d expect, the storage part can be folded out just like any other Swiss Knife component and comes with AES 256 security encryption for data protection.

The Swiss Army SSD boasts USB 2.0 and 3.0 support as well as eSATA. It comes with a Bi-Stable LCD graphics display with 48x96 resolution. The display is active even when the the drive is not plugged in.

And now for the sweetest part – these “Swiss drives” are priced from $470 for 64GB versions up to $2,000 for the 1TB version. So, if you happen to have a Swiss bank account, then treat yourself to a Swiss Army Knife SSD.